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nkur Mehta, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, has received a prestigious Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense.
The two-year, $500,000 grant will support Mehta’s research into control devices that are free of silicon components and can be produced with simple manufacturing processes using readily available raw materials. The project may be eligible for an additional $500,000 in funding following the initial grant.
The concept is based in part on the research thesis, “printable mechanical autonomy,” by Mehta’s doctoral student Wenzhong Yan. It explores design and fabrication strategies to embed intelligence using origami-like, folding-based manufacturing processes. Mehta’s research team…
